Author: alison b

Eleven yards. That is the combined distance of the three touchdown passes Kirk Cousins threw in New Orleans on Sunday, and the Raiders are 3-0.

Kirk Cousins is very happy to have Brock Bowers back.

🎙️: @Amanda_Balionis pic.twitter.com/wMNTyXiTj3

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) September 28, 2026

I keep waiting for the part where it goes wrong. It has not come yet. Las Vegas went into the Caesars Superdome, fell eleven points behind in the third quarter, and then scored the last nineteen points of the game to win 35-27 (NFL.com). Two road wins in three weeks, and the one Raiders team I have any memory of would have folded in that third quarter without much argument.

"The Las Vegas Raiders look legit..

Kirk Cousins is getting the ball out so quickly and Brock Bowers is unbelievable" ~ @danorlovsky7 #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/EE34YMOmFT

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) September 28, 2026

How the game went

The Saints were the better team for long stretches and still lost. They outgained the Raiders 381 yards to 340. They also put the ball on the floor repeatedly, losing three fumbles and throwing an interception, and in a game this tight that was the whole difference.

Quarter	Raiders	Saints
Q1	3	6
Q2	13	7
Q3	6	14
Q4	13	0
Final	35	27

Here is how the points actually went up.

Qtr	Time	Scoring play	Score (LV-NO)
Q1	7:35	Raiders: Gay 41-yard field goal	3-0
Q1	0:50	Saints: Juwan Johnson 2-yard touchdown catch (kick blocked)	3-6
Q2	11:27	Raiders: Gay 37-yard field goal	6-6
Q2	5:46	Raiders: Michael Mayer 3-yard touchdown catch	13-6
Q2	1:54	Saints: Noah Fant 3-yard touchdown catch	13-13
Q2	0:00	Raiders: Gay 25-yard field goal	16-13
Q3	6:40	Saints: Juwan Johnson 1-yard touchdown catch	16-20
Q3	5:46	Saints: Noah Fant 16-yard touchdown catch	16-27
Q3	3:20	Raiders: Washington 36-yard touchdown run (conversion failed)	22-27
Q4	9:21	Raiders: Cody White 4-yard touchdown catch (conversion failed)	28-27
Q4	6:22	Raiders: Brock Bowers 4-yard touchdown catch	35-27

Two rows there say “conversion failed”, which is worth a quick word if you are new to this. After a touchdown, worth six points, a team gets one more attempt at the end zone: an easy kick for one point, or a harder play from close range for two. Twice the Raiders came away with nothing, which is why those scores jump by six rather than seven or eight. How scoring works has the full set.

Look again at who caught the touchdowns. Juwan Johnson, Noah Fant, Michael Mayer, Brock Bowers: all four are tight ends, the hybrid position that blocks like a lineman and catches like a receiver. Six of the eight touchdowns in this game were caught by tight ends, which I had to count twice to believe. NBC Sports reported that it ties an NFL record last matched in a Chargers-Raiders game in 1981, though I could not find that one confirmed anywhere else, so take the record with a pinch of salt and the six with none at all.

Eleven yards, and what it says about throwing

Cousins finished 22 of 33 for 248 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, for a passer rating of 119.3. His longest completion of the whole afternoon gained 22 yards, and that figure includes whatever the receiver added after catching it.

A “deep ball” is usually counted as a throw travelling twenty or more yards through the air before anybody touches it. On Sunday, Cousins barely attempted one. He averaged 7.5 yards per attempt, which is a healthy number, and he got there in small, quick pieces rather than in chunks.

This is the bit that took me a while to understand, and it is why I am writing a proper piece on throwing soon. A quarterback who cannot or will not throw deep is not automatically a limited quarterback. On the Just Win Raiders Podcast, film analyst Ted Nguyen and former NFL offensive lineman Marshall Newhouse spent a good while on this, and made the point that the deliberately wasted throw is a veteran skill rather than a mistake:

“Sometimes when you see a quarterback skip a ball to a receiver ten, twelve yards out, you think, oh, he threw it low, bad mechanics, whatever. No. He’s like, as soon as I actually pull the trigger, I see that DB has too much of a jump. This is going to be a pick. It’s not worth it. I’m going to throw it near his feet.”

They counted several of those on Sunday. That is the same afternoon Cousins finished with zero interceptions, against a Saints quarterback who threw four touchdowns and still lost partly because of one. A throw into the dirt looks like a failure and is frequently a decision. If you want the numbers that do and do not capture this, QB stats, decoded lays them out.

The fumble that decided it, and the rule behind it

EarEarly in the fourth quarter, with the Raiders trailing, Malcolm Koonce hit Saints quarterback Tyler Shough as he went to throw. The ball came loose, Maxx Crosby recovered, and the officials ruled a fumble. New Orleans thought it was an incomplete pass. The ruling was reviewed and it stood.

Shough was clear about what he felt: “I thought I threw it. Me, personally, I thought my arm was going forward.”

The rule that decides this is Rule 8, Section 1, Article 1 of the NFL rulebook:

“When a player is in control of the ball and is attempting to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass.”

The word carrying the weight is control. It is not enough for the arm to be travelling forward. The passer has to still have the ball under control at the moment it does, otherwise there is no pass for the forward movement to start. Mark Butterworth, the NFL’s Vice President of Instant Replay, explained the decision in exactly those terms: “All we are looking for is the hand coming forward with control to make it an incomplete pass. In the play that happened today, the hand was not coming forward with control of the ball.”

Now the part that made me laugh out loud, because the same rule carries on:

“If, after an intentional forward movement of his hand, the passer loses possession of the ball during an attempt to bring it back toward his body, it is a fumble.”

That clause is the exact reverse of the old Tuck Rule, which said such a play was an incomplete pass, and which produced the most infamous call in Raiders history: a snowy January 2002 play-off game in New England, Tom Brady’s apparent fumble ruled not a fumble, and the Raiders’ season finished. The league scrapped the tuck rule in March 2013. Twenty-four years after it cost them, a Raiders defender knocks a ball loose in almost the same argument and the modern wording sends it the other way.

I am not going to pretend that is anything other than delicious. For how a review like this actually works, replay and challenges covers it, and the rules glossary has fumble, forced fumble and recovery separated out, which is a distinction I got wrong myself two weeks ago.

The takes

Brock Bowers played his first game of the season after knee surgery and caught ten passes for 116 yards and a touchdown. On the Just Win Raiders Podcast, Nguyen and Newhouse reckoned that was maybe eighty per cent of him, and their more interesting observation was how often Bowers lined up wide, out at receiver rather than beside the line, beating cornerbacks on third down by simply being stronger than them.

"This is the toughest cover in the NFL right now."

Brock Bowers was unbelievable against the Saints. Big season incoming.#Raiders #RaiderNation pic.twitter.com/mK1DeOZHR5

— Move The Sticks Podcast (@MTSPodOmaha) September 28, 2026

How about 38-year-old Kirk Cousins?

He’s leading the NFL with 9 TD passes and has the Raiders (3-14 a year ago) off to a 3-0 start. pic.twitter.com/ikISLDIj7I

— Grant Paulsen (@GrantPaulsen) September 28, 2026

Chris Bumbaca of USA TODAY put the surprise plainly, given the Raiders won three games in the whole of last season, and he was fair enough to flag that the officiating went their way more than once on the comeback. Both those things are true at the same time, and a team that wins ugly in September has still won.

There was a cost, too. Jack Bech, whose first career touchdown was the best moment of my Week 1, left with a broken forearm and is heading for injured reserve.

What a 3-0 start has meant before

This is the fourteenth 3-0 start in Raiders history, and only the second since 2002. Here is every one of the previous thirteen and where the season finished.

Year	Final record	How it ended
1967	13-1	Lost Super Bowl II
1968	12-2	Lost Championship
1969	12-1-1	Lost Championship
1975	11-3	Lost Championship
1976	13-1	Won Super Bowl XI
1977	11-3	Lost Championship
1982	8-1	Lost Divisional round
1983	12-4	Won Super Bowl XVIII
1984	11-5	Lost Wild Card
1987	5-10	Missed the play-offs
1990	12-4	Lost Championship
2002	11-5	Lost Super Bowl XXXVII
2021	10-7	Lost Wild Card

Twelve of those thirteen reached the postseason. Two became Super Bowl wins.

Before anyone frames that, read the small print, because two of those rows are barely seasons at all. The single failure, 1987, was the players’ strike year: one week was cancelled outright and three were played by replacement teams, so the third win of that 3-0 start came with stand-in players on the field. The Raiders then lost seven in a row. And 1982 was strike-shortened so severely that the 3-0 start ran across Weeks 1, 2 and 11. It took two months to finish.

Three of the thirteen, 1967 to 1969, came in the American Football League, before it merged with the NFL in 1970. And five of the thirteen ended in a Championship game defeat, which is its own particular kind of September promise. A 3-0 start is a strong signal. It has never once been a guarantee.

Where the Raiders sit now

AFC West	Record
Kansas City Chiefs	3-0
Las Vegas Raiders	3-0
Denver Broncos	1-1
Los Angeles Chargers	0-3

Level at the top, and the table is about to sort itself out in the most direct way available. If you want to know what a fast start is actually worth by January, the NFL play-offs and seeding explains where a record gets you, and the AFC and NFC covers why the division matters most of all.

The rest of the league

Week 3 had plenty going on beyond this one, and I have written all of it up in the full Week 3 roundup across the league.

Kansas City, Sunday

For three weeks I have written some version of the same sentence: the division runs through Kansas City until somebody knocks them off it. On Sunday the Raiders get to try, at home, with both teams 3-0 and the Chiefs on their seventh unbeaten start under Andy Reid.

Kick-off is 9.25pm on Sunday evening for those of us watching in the UK, which is a far kinder hour than this sport usually offers. If you have picked up this season new and want to know why a Raiders fan spends the week before this fixture in a mild state of dread, I have written the history properly: Chiefs vs Raiders, decoded.

Bring it on.

Bo Nix needed two points, so he threw the ball to the one place only his man could reach: the very back corner of the end zone, over the top of a defender, where Jaylen Waddle got his toes down before he fell out. What a throw, and what a catch. It pulled Denver back within a single score, in a game they had trailed 16-0, and it set the tone for a Sunday won at the thinnest margins in the sport.

Twelve of the day’s games were decided by one score. That ties the NFL record for a single week. Week 3 was not about who ran up the score, it was about the inches: a perfect throw, a leap over the pile, and more than one referee’s flag that a whole fanbase is still furious about.

The Week 3 results

Matchup (away at home)	Result
Atlanta Falcons at Green Bay Packers	Falcons 35-14
Kansas City Chiefs at Miami Dolphins	Chiefs 24-10
Carolina Panthers at Cleveland Browns	Browns 21-18
Tennessee Titans at New York Giants	Giants 12-7
New England Patriots at Jacksonville Jaguars	Jaguars 35-6
Los Angeles Chargers at Buffalo Bills	Bills 24-16
New York Jets at Detroit Lions	Lions 31-24
Houston Texans at Indianapolis Colts	Colts 19-17
Seattle Seahawks at Washington Commanders	Commanders 33-31
Cincinnati Bengals at Pittsburgh Steelers	Steelers 30-27
Arizona Cardinals at San Francisco 49ers	49ers 36-30
Minnesota Vikings at Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Vikings 23-16
Las Vegas Raiders at New Orleans Saints	Raiders 35-27
Baltimore Ravens at Dallas Cowboys	Ravens 34-31
Los Angeles Rams at Denver Broncos	Broncos 30-26
Philadelphia Eagles at Chicago Bears	Bears 27-7

Following the Raiders? They beat the Saints 35-27 to move to 3-0, the only unbeaten team left. I break their game down in the Raiders Week 3 review.

How Denver came back from 16 down

The Broncos did not score for a half. Then they scored 30 and won, and they did it with the two boldest plays in the book. Twice in the third quarter, after a touchdown, Denver turned down the routine one-point kick and went for a two-point conversion instead, one play from close range for two points rather than one, riskier and rarer. Nix threw for both. The first was that throw to Waddle in the back corner, which pulled Denver within a single score at 8-16; the second, to Pat Bryant, drew them level at 16-16. If you want the full menu of how points go up, how scoring works lays it out.

Bo Nix tough 2-point conversion to Jaylen Waddlepic.twitter.com/9TMiZLYgCi

— Underdog NFL (@UnderdogNFL) September 28, 2026

Then the defence scored, which is the fastest swing in football. Safety Talanoa Hufanga stepped in front of a Matthew Stafford pass and ran it back for a pick-six, and the team that had not scored for a half was suddenly ahead.

The winner was the oldest short-yardage play there is. On a quarterback sneak, the QB takes the snap and lunges straight ahead behind his own blockers for the yard he needs. Nix added the flourish, leaping over the top of the pile to break the plane inside the final minute. It is one of the few times a quarterback is handed the ball to run by design. For who does what on the field, positions, explained has it.

A team can look dead for a half and still win it late, if it takes the aggressive points and the defence chips in.

Twelve one-score games, and a record

Denver’s four-point win was not the exception this week, it was the rule. Twelve of Sunday’s games finished as one-score games, and that tied the NFL record for a single week.

A one-score game is one decided by eight points or fewer. Eight is the magic number because it is the most a team can score in a single possession: a six-point touchdown, plus a two-point conversion. So “one score” means the losing team was, right to the end, one good drive from drawing level. The Colts won by two, Washington by two, the Ravens, Browns and Steelers each by three, Denver by four. Up and down the schedule, one play would have flipped it.

That is the quiet argument for why the NFL holds a country’s attention every autumn. It is not that the games are high-scoring. It is that so many of them stay live until the final minute.

Pass interference: the hardest call in the game

The officials were the story in more than one stadium. In Baltimore, the crew came under fire for a set of late calls in the Ravens’ 34-31 win over Dallas. In Denver, the Rams felt they were wronged by a pass-interference flag. Different games, same argument, and it is almost always about the same rule.

THE REFS SCREWED THE RAMS

Broncos WR Pat Bryant FLOPPED pic.twitter.com/yEiJzjn8vm

— BrickCenter (@BrickCenter_) September 28, 2026

This was called defensive pass interference instead of an interception for the Rams 🤔 pic.twitter.com/xGOfie2eQw

— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) September 28, 2026

Here is what the rulebook actually says. Pass interference is defined in Rule 8, Section 5:

“It is pass interference by either team when any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball.”

Every word in that sentence is load-bearing. The contact has to be more than one yard past the line. It has to significantly hinder the catch, not just brush it. And it applies to either team, so a receiver can be flagged as easily as a defender. The penalty is brutal: a defensive foul hands the offence the ball at the spot of the contact, which on a deep ball can be forty yards from one flag.

The reason it starts fights is the very next part of the rule. Alongside the fouls, the book lists the contact that is allowed, and then adds the line that decides most of these calls: “If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference.” Two players can tangle, both reaching for the ball, and the correct call is often nothing at all. Whether a collision cleared the “significantly hinders” bar is a judgement made at full speed by one official, and it is the most contested decision in the sport. For the rest of the flags and what they cost, penalties, explained breaks them down, and for which calls replay can and cannot fix, replay and challenges covers it.

I am not going to tell you either flag was wrong, because from my sofa I cannot know. What I can tell you is that the rule is written to be waved off whenever there is doubt, which is worth remembering the next time a stadium is booing one.

Three weeks in

The league has now shown its full range in three Sundays: a record shootout, a defensive strangling, and a week won by inches. The scoring is the easy part to watch. The two-point gamble, the sneak that breaks the plane, the flag that lands or does not, that is where these games are actually decided, and it is the part I will keep pulling apart.

Wonder which way it swings next. Roll on Week 4.

You will spend about three hours watching your first NFL game, and see roughly eleven minutes of live ball.

I have pulled that broadcast apart properly in eleven minutes of football, nearly four hours of television. What matters here is what fills the gap: huddles, replays, adverts, and two people in a booth talking. If you did not grow up with this sport, that talking is a foreign language, and it is carrying most of the broadcast.

One note, since you are probably reading this from my side of the Atlantic. We would call it a match, the sport calls it a game, and I use game throughout. Football here means the NFL, not the sport we would call football.

Start here: it is not one flowing game

American football is not a flowing game like football or rugby. It is a series of separate, planned plays, stitched together with gaps.

Two entirely different squads take turns. One is the offense (US spelling; it means the eleven players trying to move the ball and score). The other is the defense, the eleven trying to stop them. They swap on and off and almost never share the field, and a coach on the sideline picks nearly every play before it happens. Once you watch it as a sequence of set pieces rather than a scramble, the chaos resolves into something you can follow.

Read it in full: how the offense works, how the defense works, and how the NFL works.

What you are actually committing to

Budget three hours, not one. The sixty-minute game clock stops and starts constantly, so game time and real time pull apart fast.

The part that catches people out over here is the timing rather than the length. Watching from the UK or Europe, the main Sunday slate runs through the evening and deep into the night, so pick your kickoff before you commit to one. I have set the timings out on how to watch.

The phrase that stumps everyone: “first and ten”

You will hear “first and ten”, “second and six” and “third and long” on a loop, and it is the first thing that makes a newcomer feel lost. Here is the actual rule:

NFL rulebook, Rule 3, Section 8, Article 2. A series of downs is the four consecutive charged scrimmage downs allotted to the offensive team during which it must advance the ball to a yard line called “the line to gain” in order to retain possession.

In plain English: a down is one play, you get four of them, and in those four you have to move the ball ten yards. Manage it and you get four fresh goes. Fail and you hand the ball over. So the two numbers are the attempt and the yards still needed, which makes “third and two” third attempt, two yards to go.

If you think you once heard a commentator say “ninth down”, you heard “third and nine”. There is no ninth down. There is no fifth, either. Four is the lot, and that four-goes-for-ten-yards cycle is the engine the whole sport runs on.

Read it in full: NFL downs explained.

Moving the ball, decoded

Most of the commentary early in a possession is tracking that four-downs cycle.

You’ll hear	What it means
The line of scrimmage	The line where the ball sits and each play starts from
The snap	The centre passes the ball back to start the play (also called the hike)
Three-and-out	The offense gained nothing in three plays and has to give the ball up
Move the chains	Gain the ten yards for a fresh first down
The red zone	Inside the opponent’s 20-yard line, where a score is close
Turnover	The offense loses the ball to the other team

Every one of those is really asking the same question: have they made their ten yards or not?

The kicking plays (yes, they hand it over on purpose)

Here is the one that baffles everyone new. It is fourth down, the team has not made its ten yards, and instead of trying again they boot the ball to the opposition.

That is a punt, and it is a trade. Rather than fail on the spot and hand the ball over where they are standing, they kick it as far downfield as they can so the other team starts further back. The alternative is a field goal, a kick through the tall posts (the uprights) worth three points, which is where “it’s good” and “no good” come from.

You’ll hear	What it means
Punt	Kick the ball away on fourth down to push the other team back
Field goal	A kick through the uprights, worth three points
Extra point / PAT	The single-point kick taken straight after a touchdown
Two-point conversion	Going for two from close range instead of the kick
Touchback	A kick that reaches the end zone; the ball is brought out to a set line
Fair catch	The returner waves to signal no run-back and cannot be tackled

Takeaway: the punt is a deliberate trade of the ball for better field position, not a surrender.

Read it in full: how NFL scoring works.

Passing, pressure and the pick

Once you have the four-downs cycle and the kicks, most of the drama is about the quarterback, the player who throws the ball, and whether the defence reaches him first.

You’ll hear	What it means
The pocket	The protected space the blockers form around the quarterback
Sack	The defence tackles the quarterback before he can throw
Blitz	Sending extra defenders to rush the quarterback fast
Play-action	The quarterback fakes a handoff to fool the defence, then passes
Interception (a “pick”)	A defender catches a pass meant for the offense
Pick six	An interception run straight back for a touchdown, worth six
Fumble	A player drops the ball while carrying it; either team can grab it
Hail Mary	A long, hopeful pass flung up at the end of a half

Protecting the quarterback’s blind side is one of the best-paid jobs on the field, and I have written about why on the blindside.

Flags, reviews and the clock

The last cluster is the officials and the countdown, the bits that stop the game and reset it.

You’ll hear	What it means
Flag on the play	An official has spotted a foul and thrown a yellow marker
False start	An offensive player moved before the snap, a common penalty
Pass interference	Illegally barging a receiver while the ball is in the air
Under review / the booth	Officials are checking a replay before confirming the call
Two-minute warning	An automatic stoppage with two minutes left in each half
Icing the kicker	Calling a timeout right before a field goal to rattle the kicker

Takeaway: a flag means a foul, a review means they are double-checking, and the last two minutes of a half slow right down.

Over to you, I hope this helps!

That is the survival kit. Know the four-downs cycle, know why they punt, and know that a flag means a foul, and you can follow your first game without anyone leaning over to translate.

If you already know this sport, I would like your help with the next version. What is the phrase that had a friend or a partner turning to you mid-game to ask what on earth just happened? Put it in the comments and I will fold the best ones in.

An NFL game runs sixty minutes on the clock. The ball is actually in play for about eleven of them. Everything else, and there is a lot of everything else, is why a Super Bowl swallows most of your evening.

Coming from soccer, this took me a while to understand. I expected ninety minutes and a bit of stoppage time, the way a football match (soccer, to a US reader) works. Three and a half hours for an hour of game did not add up, until it clicked that in American football the clock and the action are two different things.

The clock is not a stopwatch

The rulebook is clear about the length of a game:

NFL rulebook, Rule 4, Section 1, Article 1. The length of the game is 60 minutes, divided into four periods of 15 minutes each.

Sixty minutes, then. The catch is that those sixty minutes are a clock, not a stopwatch on the action. In soccer the clock simply runs. In American football it starts and stops constantly, and it keeps ticking through long spells when nothing is happening at all.

The ball is live only from the snap, when it is put into play, to the whistle that ends the play. That is around four seconds. Then both teams line up again, and the rulebook gives them a forty-second play clock to do it. The game clock is often still running through that reset, so game-time and real-time pull apart quickly.

It also stops for its own reasons: an incomplete pass, a player stepping out of bounds, a score, a timeout, the two-minute warning near the end of each half. Every stoppage is a door for an advert.

Where the other three hours go

Add it up and the actual football is a sliver of the broadcast. A Wall Street Journal study once timed the whole thing.

In a typical three-hour-plus broadcast	Time
Players, coaches and officials between plays	about 75 min
Commercials	about 60 min
Replays	about 17 min
The ball actually in play	about 11 min

Source: Wall Street Journal study, 2010. The figure is fifteen years old and counts only snap-to-whistle, so a study drawing the line elsewhere would land somewhere different. The proportion is the durable part, not the decimal.

More than a hundred plays are packed into that sliver, each a few seconds long. That is the rhythm of the sport, a short violent burst and then a reset, over and over.

Why the Super Bowl adds another hour

A regular game averages a little over three hours. The Super Bowl stretches closer to four, and the extra time is not football.

Start with the interval, which the rulebook fixes for a normal game:

NFL rulebook, Rule 4, Section 1, Article 3. Between the second and third periods, there shall be an intermission of 13 minutes.

Thirteen minutes is the standard. The Super Bowl halftime runs to roughly half an hour, because a stadium-sized music production has to be built and cleared. Add a vast build-up, adverts that cost millions, and a trophy ceremony in no hurry, and the extra hour is accounted for without a single additional snap. If you are planning an evening around it, I have laid out the actual timings in how to watch the Super Bowl.

The eleven-minute stat is a little unfair

One honest caveat. That eleven-minute figure makes the game sound like mostly standing around, and plenty of people wave it about for exactly that reason.

What it misses is what the pause is for. The forty seconds before each snap is where the game is decided: the quarterback reading the defence (US spelling: defense), the coaches sending in a play, both sides shifting to counter each other. Four seconds of action, bought with forty seconds of chess. That ratio is the sport itself.

If the mechanics of the game is what you are after, how the NFL works is the place to start. If it is the commentary losing you, your first NFL game, decoded is the phrasebook.

Nine games this season are played outside the United States, the most the NFL has ever staged in a single year. Three of them are in London, one is in Paris for the first time ever, and if you are reading this from the UK or Europe, that is not a coincidence. The league has spent nearly twenty years turning “American football” into something you can watch in person on a Sunday afternoon without crossing an ocean. Here is how that happened, and why the NFL keeps doing it.

It comes down to money and fans, in that order

The NFL plays abroad to grow its audience in places where the sport is already catching on, and to earn money it cannot earn at home. That is the whole engine, and everything else is detail.

A regular-season game is a scarce thing. Each team plays only 17 of them a year, so every single one is valuable, and moving one to London or Munich puts the league in front of a live crowd of 60,000-plus people who might otherwise never see a game. It also sells tickets, television rights and sponsorship in a market the league wants to own. A club gives up a home game to make it happen, which tells you what the league thinks the trade is worth.

Where it started: one game at Wembley, 2007

The first regular-season NFL game in another country was actually in Mexico City in 2005, when the Arizona Cardinals beat the San Francisco 49ers 31-14 at Estadio Azteca. That crowd of 103,467 is still the largest for any international NFL game. But the series as we know it began two years later.

On 28 October 2007, the New York Giants played the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium in London. The Giants won 13-10, the stadium was full at just over 81,000, and the first 40,000 tickets had sold in 90 minutes. That last number is the one that mattered to the league. It proved there was real, ticket-buying demand in Britain, not just polite curiosity.

From there it grew steadily. London had one game a year through 2011, then more. Other cities came on board. What began as a single fixture is now a nine-game programme across four continents.

London in 2007 was the test, and it passed loudly enough to build everything else on.

What came before: the American Bowl years

The NFL did not arrive in London cold in 2007. It had been testing the water with exhibition games for decades.

From 1986 to 2005, the league ran the American Bowl, a series of preseason games played in cities like London, Tokyo, Berlin and Mexico City, 40 of them in all. Preseason games do not count and the star players barely feature, so they were never going to build a serious following on their own. But they showed the league where the appetite was. The first NFL game ever played outside North America was even earlier, an exhibition in Tokyo in 1976.

Preseason (the warm-up games before the season proper, which I explain in how the NFL preseason works) was the league dipping a toe in. The switch to real, regular-season games in 2007 was it deciding the water was warm.

Why these games are good news if you are in the UK or Europe

For anyone learning the game from this side of the Atlantic, the international games solve the single most annoying thing about being an NFL fan here: the clock.

A normal NFL Sunday kicks off at 1:00pm US Eastern, which is 6:00pm in the UK, and the night games run past midnight and into the small hours. The London, Paris and Madrid games kick off at 9:30am Eastern instead, which lands at 2:30pm UK time. A Sunday afternoon, not a bleary-eyed all-nighter. You can go, or you can watch at a civilised hour, and several of the UK games are on free-to-air television.

There is also the obvious one: you can be in the room. A ticket to a London game costs a fraction of a transatlantic trip to see the same thing. This is the one part of the NFL calendar built around your time zone rather than against it.

How the NFL decides which teams play abroad

No team volunteers to lose a home game, so the league shares the load. Every one of the 32 teams is signed up to the Global Markets Programme, which hands each club the marketing rights to specific countries so it can build a fanbase and commercial deals there. The Jacksonville Jaguars, for instance, have played a “home” game in London almost every year for over a decade.

On top of that, the league has committed that every team will play at least one international game every eight years. So if your team has not been abroad in a while, its turn is coming. The designated home team gives up a home fixture; the away team just travels further than usual.

A note on betting terms

Follow the games in the British media and you will run into betting language, because the UK fixtures fall in prime viewing hours and get heavy coverage. Here is the one term worth knowing, explained as a concept, not a suggestion.

The “spread” is a handicap. Instead of betting on the winner, the margin is what counts: the favourite has to win by more than a set number of points. It exists to turn a one-sided game into a roughly even question. That is all it is.

Where this is heading

The nine-game season is not the ceiling. The league has already approved room for up to 10 international games in future seasons, and the list of host cities keeps growing: 2026 added Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Paris to a roll that already included London, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dublin, São Paulo, Mexico City and Toronto.

Two bigger ideas get floated regularly. One is a permanent overseas franchise, an actual team based in London or elsewhere. The other is a Super Bowl played abroad. Neither is close, and the logistics of both are genuinely hard, but the commissioner has said an international Super Bowl is “possible” rather than ruling it out. Twenty years ago a single London game was the experiment. That tells you which direction this travels.

This season’s international NFL games

Here are all nine of the 2026 international fixtures, with UK kickoff times so you can plan around them rather than around US Eastern. Ticket links go to the official NFL international page; some games may be sold out by the time you click. This is the part of the page I refresh each season.

Date	City	Matchup (Away @ Home)	Venue	Kickoff (UK)	Tickets
Thu 10 Sep	Melbourne	49ers @ Rams	MCG	11:35am	Played
Sun 27 Sep	Rio de Janeiro	Ravens @ Cowboys	Maracanã	9:25pm	Get tickets
Sun 4 Oct	London	Colts @ Commanders	Tottenham Hotspur	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 11 Oct	London	Eagles @ Jaguars	Tottenham Hotspur	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 18 Oct	London	Texans @ Jaguars	Wembley	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 25 Oct	Paris	Steelers @ Saints	Stade de France	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 8 Nov	Madrid	Bengals @ Falcons	Bernabéu	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 15 Nov	Munich	Patriots @ Lions	FC Bayern Arena	2:30pm	Get tickets
Sun 22 Nov	Mexico City	Vikings @ 49ers	Estadio Banorte	1:20am (Mon)	Get tickets

The Melbourne opener has already been played (the 49ers won it 27-7). The Jaguars are the busy ones again: two London games in three weeks, the home team both times.

For the full week-by-week fixture list, kickoff times and results, see the 2026 NFL schedule. And if you have ever wondered why each team plays only 17 games in an 18-week season in the first place, that is its own strange story: why the NFL plays 17 games.

If one of these lands near you this autumn, go. It is the easiest, cheapest and best-timed way to see this game live that you will ever get.

Two and oh, Raider Nation. I am sat here with the biggest grin on my face, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. I am a fan first and a level-headed writer a distant second, where the Raiders are concerned.

Las Vegas Raiders are 2-0 for the first time in longer than I care to admit.

The best part is not even the record. It is how they did it. Las Vegas went to Los Angeles, beat the Chargers 26-14 on their own field, and did it with a pass rush that, by at least one measure, is now the most disruptive defence in the entire league (NFL.com). Last season the Raiders lost in that same building 31-14. This one was never really that close.

If you missed it, last week they opened with a 27-13 win over Miami, and the story was the same one: the defence set the tone and Kirk Cousins did the rest. Here is what mattered this time.

How the game went

Nobody scored in the first quarter, which suited the Raiders fine, because the longer the game stayed tight the more their defence took over.

Las Vegas led 10-7 at the half, 17-14 after three, and then shut the Chargers out in the fourth while adding nine points of their own to win going away.

Quarter	Raiders	Chargers
Q1	0	0
Q2	10	7
Q3	7	7
Q4	9	0
Final	26	14

Source: NFL.com game centre, Raiders at Chargers Week 2.

Here is how the points actually went up.

Quarter	Scoring play	Score (LV-LAC)
Q2 11:51	Raiders: Cousins 40-yard touchdown pass to Tucker	7-0
Q2 5:26	Chargers: Hampton 1-yard touchdown run	7-7
Q2 0:04	Raiders: Gay 59-yard field goal	10-7
Q3 9:49	Chargers: Herbert 10-yard touchdown pass to Gadsden	10-14
Q3 3:53	Raiders: Cousins 13-yard touchdown pass to White	17-14
Q4 2:59	Raiders: Cousins 11-yard touchdown pass to White	24-14
Q4 1:41	Raiders: safety, Chargers holding in the end zone	26-14

That last line is worth a look, because it is the rarest way to score in football.

A safety is two points awarded to the defence, and this one came when the Chargers were flagged for a holding foul committed inside their own end zone.

Commit a penalty like that behind your own goal line and the other team is simply handed two points and the ball.

It was a fittingly tidy way to cap a game the Raiders controlled, and if you want the full list of ways points go on the board, how scoring works has it.

The whole afternoon ran through the Raiders’ pass rush. Justin Herbert, who is a strong quarterback, spent the day being chased, hit and hurried, and the Chargers kept putting the ball on the floor under the pressure.

When a defence dictates a game like that, the offence does not need to be spectacular, it just needs to not get in the way, and the Raiders managed exactly that. If you want the full picture of the jobs a defence is actually doing on a play like this, I keep it here: the defence, decoded.

Pressure rate: the stat that made me sit up

What is pressure rate? It is the share of an opponent’s dropbacks on which the defence disrupts the quarterback, and disruption means a sack, a hit, or a hurry, not only the sacks that show up on the scoreboard.

According to Next Gen Stats, the Raiders are generating a quarterback pressure rate of 50.0% through two weeks, the highest in the NFL (NFL Researcher). SumerSports, a different stats model, has them a shade lower but still second in the league at 51.5%, which it grades in the 98th percentile of any defence since 2022 (Shawn Syed).

The Las Vegas Raiders defense generated a 45.2% pressure rate (81st percentile) against the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 2

The Raiders defense currently ranks 2nd in the league with a 51.5% pressure rate (98th percentile over two games since 2022), per @SumerSports

— Shawn Syed (@SyedSchemes) September 21, 2026

Roughly half of everything Herbert tried on Sunday, the Raiders got a hand in. The two numbers differ slightly because the two services define a “pressure” a little differently, which is a useful reminder that a single stat is only ever as good as its definition. Either way, the message is the same: this is the loudest part of the team right now. If you want to know which defensive numbers are worth watching and what each one is really telling you, defence stats, decoded lays them out.

Highest QB pressure rate in 2026, per @NextGenStats:

1. Raiders – 50.0%
2. Vikings – 49.4%
3. Packers – 45.6%
4. Eagles – 45.2%
5. Ravens – 43.8%

Lowest QB pressure rate…

28. Colts – 28.4%
29. Bears – 28.4%
30. Bills – 27.9%
31. Cardinals – 27.9%)
32. Rams – 27.8%…

— NFL Researcher (@NFL_Researcher) September 21, 2026

Fumbles, the bit that confused me

While we are on the subject of the pass rush, one stat about it went round Raiders social on Sunday night and needs a second look, because it is a lovely example of how a football number can mislead you.

The first version doing the rounds was that the Raiders had forced six fumbles, which would have put them one off an NFL single-game record of seven. That would have been a story in itself, but it was not quite true.

The person who posted it corrected himself within the hour: the Chargers fumbled the ball six times, but the Raiders were credited with forcing four of those (Alex Monfreda).

That gap is the whole lesson. A fumble is simply the ball coming loose, and it goes against whoever was holding it.

A forced fumble is different: it is credited to the specific defender who knocked it out, and it is the one that measures the hit.

And then a fumble recovery is a third thing again, who actually ends up with the ball once it is on the floor, which can be either team.

Six loose balls is not the same as six forced fumbles, which is not the same as six takeaways.

The Raiders had a genuinely destructive day either way, but the honest number is four forced, not six, and the record was never really in danger. I unpick this kind of thing in defence stats, decoded and the plain-English rules glossary.

The Las Vegas Raiders’ defense tied for the second-most fumbles forced in an NFL game.

The record: 7
The Raiders today: 6

— Alex Monfreda (@AlexMonfreda) September 20, 2026

The takes

It was not all defence. Kirk Cousins had another tidy afternoon, going 19 of 29 for 253 yards and three touchdowns, which StatMuse noted made him one of the most productive active quarterbacks in three-touchdown games (StatMuse).

Pro Football Focus’s grades told a clearer story of how, Cousins beat Herbert in nearly every column that mattered, three touchdowns to one, one interception to two, and a passer rating of 113.0 against Herbert’s 59.5 (PFF). When the quarterback everyone rates gets outplayed by the quarterback nobody talks about, that is the take of the day.

RECAP: Raiders shock Chargershttps://t.co/Ts6MW4GyhO pic.twitter.com/aMLQgeOmqd

— PFF (@PFF) September 21, 2026

What glorious day it was. The Raiders’ own account sums up the mood better than I can.

Today was a good day 😎 #RaiderNation pic.twitter.com/jfaX4AhoEo

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) September 21, 2026

Where the Raiders sit now

Two wins in, the Raiders sit level at the top of the AFC West, and for once the view is worth enjoying. Isn’t it nice to be able to see down below!

AFC West	Record
Kansas City Chiefs	2-0
Las Vegas Raiders	2-0
Denver Broncos	1-1
Los Angeles Chargers	0-2

Kansas City kept pace, so the division still runs through the champions until somebody knocks them off it, which is the oldest story in Raiders football.

But the underlying maths has genuinely shifted. The Athletic’s playoff model now gives Las Vegas a 22% chance of reaching the postseason, up from 8% before the season, and a 7% shot at the division, up from 3% (Sam Warren, via The Athletic’s Raiders playoff simulator — subscription needed or get a free 7-day trial to view).

Read that for what it is, one model’s summary of where a 2-0 start leaves them, not a promise.

If you want to understand how a fast start actually turns into a playoff place, the NFL playoffs and seeding explains what 2-0 is really worth, and the AFC and NFC covers why the division race matters most.

How did the rest of the league do

The Raiders were one of sixteen games again, and there was plenty going on elsewhere in Week 2. Although this for me was THE highlight! Check out the full Week 2 roundup across the league in my write up.

Before I get too carried away

I know how this works. Two good weeks in September is a reason to smile, not a reason to book anything for January, and the pressure rate will come back to earth the moment the Raiders meet an offence that can get the ball out quickly.

But 2-0 is 2-0, the defence looks like it could ruin people’s Sundays all year, and I am going to enjoy every minute until proven otherwise. If you want to relive it, the club put together a proper highlight reel that is well worth your time (Raiders.com highlights). See you next Tuesday, Raider Nation. I’ll just leave this here…

Done, NEXT.

LFG!!! 🦅🏴‍☠️🖤

— Maxx Crosby (@CrosbyMaxx) September 21, 2026

If Week 1 was a fireworks display, Week 2 was the defences bringing the rain.

A week after the Bears scored 59 points against Carolina, they managed just 3 against the Vikings. Same offence, same coordinator, 56 fewer points. They were not the only team to flip from firing on all cylinders to firing blanks.

Across the league, offences that looked unstoppable seven days ago ran into turnovers, missed kicks, a fair bit of rain and defensive coordinators who had spent a week doing their homework.

The Bears’ 56-point drop from one week to the next was the fourth-largest such swing in NFL history, and the biggest since 1973 (per ESPN Research, via Benjamin Solak). So before anything else, here is the full slate.

The NFL Week 2 Results

Following the Raiders? They beat the Chargers 26-14 to move to 2-0. I break their game down properly in the Raiders Week 2 review.

The Bears went from 59 to 3, and the defence is the reason

The Minnesota Vikings did not just beat the Chicago Bears 9-3. They took the highest-scoring offence of Week 1 and switched it off. Minnesota’s defensive coordinator, Brian Flores, sent extra pass rushers at Caleb Williams on roughly three of every four dropbacks, a tactic called the blitz, which trades defenders in coverage for more bodies chasing the quarterback. Williams never settled, checked the ball down all afternoon, and later left with a hamstring injury. His backup could not turn it around, and a last-second Minnesota sack ended it.

The same story played out in Atlanta. A week after conceding 59 points, Carolina’s defence held the Falcons to 3, forcing turnovers and taking a game over outright. Two of the most embarrassed defences from Week 1 came straight back and won games on their own.

If you want to measure a performance like that properly, the stat to know is EPA, expected points added. It grades every play by how much it moved a team’s expected points up or down, which strips the scoreboard out and rewards good football over lucky football. It is exactly what Sam Hoppen charts, game by game, and his Vikings-Bears breakdown shows how one-sided the day really was.

Just posted waterfall game recap charts over on my Substack for all the Week 2 games so far! Added a little commentary on what caught my eye as well. Another great week of football!

🔗⤵️ pic.twitter.com/QQm9gdKbTv

— Sam Hoppen (@SamHoppen) September 21, 2026

Read Sam Hoppen

If you want to see how a game was actually won and lost, past the final score, this is the work to follow. Every week, for every single game, Sam Hoppen charts the win probability and the expected points added on both sides of the ball. It is some of the clearest football data going, and it is free. Do yourself a favour and subscribe to Hoppen to Conclusions. Both charts in this piece are his.

A brilliant offence and a well-drilled defensive plan met on the same field, and this week the plan won. That is the whole game in one sentence, and it is why a single enormous week never settles anything.

For the numbers that measure a defence properly, defense stats, decoded breaks them down.

The upset of the week turned on one gutsy decision

The New Orleans Saints walked into Baltimore as heavy underdogs, trailed 14-6 at the break, and walked out 24-17 winners. The game turned on nerve. With the ball near the goal line and the result in the balance, head coach Kellen Moore turned down the safe field goal and went for it on fourth down instead, the last of the four attempts a team gets to move the ball ten yards. Quarterback Tyler Shough sneaked it in himself for the score that won it.

Going for it there used to look reckless. It is now, more and more, just arithmetic. Close to the goal line, the points a team can expect from going for the touchdown outweigh the near-certain three from a kick, as long as it backs the offence to convert. Moore backed his in each of the first two weeks, and this time it paid off. Sam Hoppen’s charts show the swing in full.

The safe call and the smart call are not always the same one, and the space between them is where coaches earn their money. If you want the mechanics of downs and why a team “goes for it”, how the NFL works lays it out.

The Chargers are 0-2, and the way they got there is uncanny

The Los Angeles Chargers have now lost both their games by the exact same score, 26-14, first to Arizona and then to the Raiders. ESPN Insights flagged just how odd the start is: they are only the fourth team in NFL history to open 0-2 against opponents who each won three or fewer games the season before.

The Chargers are winless and their games have been eerily similar 😳

🏈 Week 1: Lost 26-14 to Arizona (3-14 last season)
🏈 Week 2: Lost 26-14 to Las Vegas (3-14 last season)

They're the 4th team in NFL history to start 0-2 despite facing opponents who won 3 or fewer games… pic.twitter.com/IMIXkqG8bN

— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) September 21, 2026

One caution before anyone buries them: that is four teams across roughly ninety seasons, which is another way of saying it is barely a pattern, and it is two games of football. The underlying numbers are not kind either.

As Sam Hoppen’s data shows, the Chargers sit near the very bottom of the league for offensive efficiency through two weeks, and they are running the ball for a league-worst return per carry.

Chart by Sam Hoppen, Hoppen to Conclusions.

The team that handed them Sunday’s defeat, of course, was the Raiders, who I cover on their own in the Raiders Week 2 review.

Two identical defeats make a tidy story. Whether they add up to a bad season is a question only the next month can answer.

What did NFL Week 2 show us?

The Bears’ 59 points and the Giants’ statement win over Dallas were both gone by Sunday night, replaced by a 3 and a 28-6 hiding on Monday. That does not mean Week 1 lied and Week 2 is the truth. It means two data points are not a trend, and the league spends September reminding everyone of exactly that. I will keep decoding it a week at a time.

Wonder which way the pendulum swings next, if it swings at all. Roll on Week 3!

Three. That is how many games the Chicago Bears have run for 250-plus yards in since the start of the 2025 season. The rest of the NFL, all 31 other teams put together, has four. One team is sitting on nearly half the league’s total by itself, and that lopsidedness is the whole reason the stat stops your thumb mid-scroll.

I did precisely that when this post crossed my feed on X over the weekend.

Since the start of last season, the #Bears have 3 games with 250+ rushing yards.

The rest of the NFL only has 4 combined. pic.twitter.com/9P52miOZTW

— NFL Stats (@NFL_Stats) September 20, 2026

simple question: do the stats lie?

Well, not this one. The number is real. It’s also carefully framed, and the framing is the part worth seeing, because the same move sits behind half the stats anyone will ever throw at you about a team.

What the number is actually counting

Rushing means running the ball forward, not throwing it. A rushing yard is a yard a team gains on the ground, and 250 of them in a single game is a lot.

The modern NFL is a passing league. Most teams are built to throw first and run mainly to kill the clock late in a game they are already winning. A 250-yard day on the ground means a team either has a genuinely dominant offensive line and running back, or spent the afternoon steamrolling a helpless opponent, or both. Plenty of teams go a whole season without one.

So the Bears having three while everyone else combined manages four is a genuine outlier. That part isn’t a trick.

Why the stats framing lands so hard

The line doing the heavy lifting is “the rest of the NFL only has four combined.”

Said flat, “the Bears have had three big rushing games since last season” is a shrug. Reframed as three against four-across-everyone-else, the identical fact becomes a scarcity story. Your brain does the maths, sees one team holding nearly half a league-wide total, and reads dominance. It’s the same move a good headline makes, and it works.

The two dials every stat like this is set on

Here is the part nobody points out. A stat like this has two dials, and whoever writes it chooses where both are set.

The first is the window: “since the start of last season.” Not this season, not the last five years, not since 2020. A specific start date, picked.

The second is the threshold: 250 rushing yards. Not 200, not 300. A specific line, picked.

Nudge either one and the picture moves. Drop the line to 200 yards and other teams walk back into the count. Widen the window and the gap can shrink. This isn’t the tweet lying, it’s just how a stat like this is made: choose the window and the line that make your team look most singular, then let the number speak for itself.

Knowing the dials are there is the difference between being impressed and being informed.

The stat itself is still true, though

Don’t take my over-analysis as cynicism. The dials being adjustable doesn’t make the Bears’ running game fake.

They finished the 2025 season third in the league for rushing yards per game, with two backs, D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai, both clearing 750 yards on the ground. Under head coach Ben Johnson, this is a team with a real identity: win by running the ball straight down people’s throats, in a league built around the pass. The stat is dressed up, but the thing underneath it is real.

So, do NFL stats lie?

No, as long as you understand that a good stat like this is doing two things at once: telling you something true, and choosing the frame that makes it land hardest. Both can be true together.

The Bears really are running the ball better than anyone right now, and the person who wrote that stat really did pick the window and the line that said so most loudly.

Seeing both at the same time is the whole skill, and it’s the same one behind reading a tidy power ranking without swallowing it whole.

Eight of the last ten players taken first in the NFL draft were quarterbacks. The other two were edge rushers, and both were treated as mild surprises.

What “first overall” NFL Draft pick means

The draft is how NFL teams sign new players out of college, and the team that finished the previous season with the worst record picks first. That very first name called is the “first overall” pick, the most prized slot in the whole event, and you can read how a team ends up with it here.

Almost every year, that pick is spent on a quarterback: the player who takes the ball at the start of nearly every play and runs the offense.

So the most valuable pick in the sport nearly always buys the same job.

Why that is stranger than it sounds

A team with the first pick can choose any player, at any of the twenty-odd positions on the field. It keeps choosing the same one.

Through 2026, 38 quarterbacks have gone first overall, more than any other position by a wide margin. A running back has not been picked first since 1995.

Out of a whole roster of roles, one has become the default answer.

What a quarterback is actually worth

The quarterback touches the ball on almost every offensive play and makes the first decision on most of them. Get that position right and the rest of the team looks better; get it wrong and little else helps. It is also the position with the numbers everyone argues about, which is how a quarterback gets measured.

That is why a team will spend the single best pick it owns, and often trade up to reach it, on the chance of finding one.

The top pick, put plainly, is a bet on a franchise quarterback.

A comparison if you have come from football

There is no draft in football, so the closest parallel is the transfer market. Picture a summer window where the biggest fee in the world went to the same position almost every year, decade after decade.

That is what the top of the NFL draft looks like. The role that costs the most is settled before the bidding starts.

The surprise at the top is not who goes first, but what they play.

The Draft exceptions that make the point

Only two of the last ten first picks broke the pattern: Myles Garrett in 2017 and Travon Walker in 2022, both edge rushers, the defenders whose main job is to chase down the quarterback.

When a team passes on a quarterback with the first pick, it is notable enough to lead the coverage.

The rule is firm enough that breaking it becomes the story.

So when a team wins the race to the bottom and lands the first pick, half the guesswork about who they will take is already done for you. It is almost always the quarterback. The rare year it is not usually means that team either had its quarterback already, or looked at the ones on offer and decided none was worth the sport’s most expensive bet.

Tom Brady lost the ball, the Raiders recovered it, and the Patriots’ season should have ended there. Referee Walt Coleman went to the replay screen and came back with an incomplete pass, because of a rule so obscure most people watching had never heard of it. The Patriots won in overtime, went on to their first Super Bowl, and eleven years later the NFL scrapped the rule entirely by a vote of 29-1.

This is the third of three plays so contentious the league rewrote its book. The Raiders are in all of them: beaten by the Immaculate Reception in 1972, winners by the Holy Roller in 1978, and on the wrong end here.

What happened in the snow at Foxboro

Image still is from the NFLs YouTube Channels, Raiders vs. Patriots: ‘Tuck Rule’ Game | NFL 2001 Divisional Round Highlight

It was 19 January 2002, an AFC divisional playoff game at Foxboro Stadium, played through heavy snow. The Raiders led the New England Patriots 13-10 in the fourth quarter.

With under two minutes left, Raiders cornerback Charles Woodson blitzed from Brady’s right and hit him as he brought the ball down. The ball came loose. Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert recovered it, which, with the Raiders ahead and the clock running down, would have effectively ended the game.

Coleman reviewed the play and overturned the call. Not a fumble, an incomplete pass. New England kept the ball.

Adam Vinatieri kicked a 45-yard field goal through the snow with 27 seconds left to tie it, then a 23-yarder in overtime to win it 16-13. Two games later the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI.

What the tuck rule actually said

The rule was Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2, and it had been in the book since 1999. In plain terms: once a quarterback starts moving his arm forward to throw, it counts as a forward pass even if he loses the ball while pulling it back into his body. Only once the ball is fully tucked against him does dropping it become a fumble.

That is the whole thing. It sounds like a technicality because it is one. A quarterback who has visibly given up on throwing, and is bringing the ball back to his chest, is still legally “passing” until the tuck is complete.

So Brady dropping the ball mid-tuck was, by the letter of the rule, an incomplete pass rather than a fumble.

Why the call was defensible and infuriating at once

Coleman applied the rule as written. That is the uncomfortable part for anyone wanting a villain: the ruling followed the text.

The Raiders never accepted it. Woodson has maintained for years that it was a fumble and the call was wrong. Bruce Allen, then running the Raiders’ front office, put the objection more precisely: he said the rule itself did not bother him, but that as the rule was written, it was a fumble.

Coleman later said the reversal was right and it was his on-field explanation that had been muddled. The NFL backed the call, and its competition committee reviewed the rule after that season and left it alone.

What made it burn was not a rogue referee. It was a rule almost nobody agreed with, enforced correctly at the worst possible moment.

The eleven-year wait

The rule survived far longer than the outrage suggests. It kept surfacing, roughly a dozen times a season by the league’s own account, including a Chiefs-Ravens playoff game in January 2011 where a Matt Cassel fumble was reversed to an incomplete pass on review. Mike Pereira, the NFL’s former head of officiating, publicly withdrew his support after that one.

Then on 20 March 2013, at the annual meeting in Phoenix, the owners voted 29-1 to strike it out. Pittsburgh cast the only vote to keep it. New England abstained, as did Washington, whose general manager was that same Bruce Allen, by then citing a tribute to the late Raiders owner Al Davis.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft, asked about it afterwards, said he loved the tuck rule and always would, and that Al Davis was probably smiling. Today, a quarterback who loses the ball while tucking it has fumbled, full stop.

What the three plays add up to

Put the series side by side and a pattern shows. In 1972 the rule was too strict, and the NFL repealed the double-touch restriction six years later. In 1978 the rule was too loose, and the league closed the fumble loophole within months. In 2002 the rule was simply bad, and it took until 2013 to go.

The rulebook is not handed down finished. It gets rewritten by the plays that break it, usually years after everyone has agreed it should be.

Watch a quarterback lose the ball mid-motion this season. It is a fumble, no debate, no replay booth searching for an arm angle. That clean answer cost the Raiders a playoff game and took the league eleven years to arrive at.